


These fragile bones

by violetkareninas



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Allusions to AU Character death, F/M, Fluff, Slow burn and soft hurt/comfort fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-13 01:46:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18022475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetkareninas/pseuds/violetkareninas
Summary: “I’ve never died before, Caleb. Not -- not totally. Not like that.”Not that he had seen. He’d been too far away before he’d realised what had happened. Too dead, too, if what Caduceus had said had been true. Caleb Widogast. Too far away, too helpless, and too dead. That just about summed him up.But for her, he smiled. "Yeah, I know. But you came back."





	These fragile bones

“Jester,” Caleb’s voice is soft, one hand lingering on the door handle, ready to pull it taut at a moments notice as his eyes survey the room, “is now a...good time?”

The irony of the statement tastes as blood might in his mouth: distasteful, metallic, cloying. He spits the words out, cringing at every syllable. He doesn’t _want_ to stand in her room, crowding up the space she should by rights be able to have to herself. Space that Fjord and Beau and Nott and Caduceus said she deserved. Not after today; not after what she’s been through. What they’ve both been through, he reminds himself.

After all, he died too.

She is sat on the edge of her bed, a nondescript, roughly carved thing, with her tail wrapped around her waist as tightly as a comforting arm might rest there. For a moment, she doesn’t meet his gaze, her eyes resting a little too long on the floorboards beneath her feet, before they flick upwards, bright and blue to meet his own. His hand tightens around the handle instinctively, ready to step back, to swing it shut and give her space.  He knows it was a stupid idea to ask, to even come here. Not when he hasn’t even bothered to change since the fight, the rips in his coat and the dried matted blood only serving as reminders of the _thing_ they just faced and of what happened afterwards.

But then she smiles. It is a weak, watered down beam of sunlight across her tired face, but she affixes him with a sincere look and waves her hand. “Sure, Caleb. Come in.”

There is a pause, the length of a heartbeat that now thankfully sounds in both of their chests. Slowly, he walks into her room and shuts the door behind him. Already his mouth has turned dry and his hands are clammy, but he makes himself walk the rest of the way towards her, before hanging at the edge of the bed unsure of where to go or what to do next.

“I know it seems --” he begins, a worried frown pressing lines into his forehead, before starting again with a sigh, his voice soft. “Are you okay?”

He stares intently at her face, searching for any change in her body language, trying to decipher her expression as it grows momentarily clouded.  She responds with a quiet voice, quieter and more pensive than he is used to hearing from the blue tiefling. The shift in volume makes him want to listen more, and suddenly he is poised like a cat with its tail on end. “I mean, we’re alive, aren’t we? That’s pretty good.”

Caleb exhales, and nods, a small chuckle bubbling past his lips. She joins in with one of her own, tugging at the bloodied hem of a torn white sleeve. It seems she too hasn’t bothered to change since the ritual was cast. “ _Ja_ , we are” he says, pausing to look down at himself, “alive.”

_What a mess._

Jester nods, before silence crowds the room again. It is all he can do not to speak, to nervously fill it up with words that don’t mean anything, crowding the lull with platitudes and promises. Anything, to see how she is.

“But are you okay... truly?” He is pressing the issue he knows. But he has to ask.  

Silence sits, as heavy as a weight on his chest. Until, that is, she speaks.

This time her voice is a little stronger in the way she forces out words. Yet, the way she sounds, lost and hesitant, makes him want to step forward closer to comfort her. But he doesn’t. Instead he stands, stock-still, almost paralysed with hesitancy and he listens. Right now he finds it is all he can do. “I’ve never _died_ before, Caleb. Not -- not _totally._ Not like that.”

As she speaks, he watches her hands rest on where her wounds had been, touching the flap of torn fabric, white turned brown and blood crusted and jagged, the site of where the beast’s teeth had sunk around her torso and torn the life from her. Not that he had seen. He’d been too far away before he’d realised what had happened. Too dead, too, if what Caduceus had said had been true. Caleb Widogast. Too far away, too helpless, and too dead. The phrase sits bitter and mockingly, turning over and over in his mind as he stares at this young woman in front of him, perched precariously on a coverlet, also brought back from death.

“Yeah, I know. But... you came back,” he says. He cringes at the own pathetic nature of his voice. 

On the other hand, what he doesn’t say is enough to make him sick. Nerves jitter in his stomach whilst unsaid words cram into his mouth, until he swallows them back down with a shaky sigh. There is no use in thinking on what happened to him or how he’d died. That is a conversation and a thought for later. It is one he has pushed to the back of his mind like a great deal of other things. He can wait. Now, _she_ needs someone.

“I heard what you all said to me, y’know. You, and Fjord, and Beau, and Nott.” Her voice again, cutting through the noise, breaks his reverie. In a instant, nausea rises in his throat, making his gut roil, and he averts his gaze.

 He wished, of all the things he’d witnessed, that he could forget seeing her splayed out on that table like he had. That he could forget seeing how her head lolled, her clothes a torn, bloodied mess, or how her hands hung limp, and how the guilt, hot and stabbing, had clenched its way up and around his throat.

He remembers the bitter taste of Caduceus’ tea on his tongue as he’d come around, staring into violet eyes whilst screams had echoed around him in the cavern. He remembers how Beau had carried her into the basement of the inn they were staying at, tears streaked down her bloodied face; how Fjord had barred the door, and swept everything off the table with a sweep of his hand just to set Jester down; how Nott had pressed a bloodied flower into her hand, and how he’d just stared and stared at the stone wall, his mouth tasting of vomit, legs shaking beneath him, and wishing more than anything that it was him on that table and her standing up, well and alive…

“Ja, well -- you are...very special. To all of us.” His voice wavers a little as he speaks, knowing that although he didn’t offer anything to the ritual, that Fjord and Beau and Nott should always have been the ones to do it, it is hard to believe that she still includes _him_.

“You are very sweet, Caleb.”

He remembers Beau pleading with Jester to come back, grabbing her hand like it would break, and how Fjord had placed a tiny sapphire in her hand, his voice shifting to sound like someone else entirely... He shrugs, his eyes resting soberly on her. “I would not say it if it weren’t true.”

There is another pause, as Jester looks up at him again, her own gaze now piercing. A flush of heat burns through his cheeks and he instinctively looks away as she speaks, her voice quiet and hushed. “I mean...you died too. It’s okay to be sad about it if you want. Caduceus had to pick someone first.”

Despite himself, he cannot help but laugh, a coughing, ripping noise that comes out in one, long, breathless, sound. “That is...not,” he begins, letting the sentence die on his lips, shoving his hands deep into his coat pockets, to twiddle with some spare silver wire. “I would much rather he have picked you first.”

There. He doesn’t dare look at her now his confession is laid out before her. Instinctively, his hands come out of his pockets to rub against the bandages that cover his scarred arms.

“Do you remember anything? From when you died?”

He forces himself to look up, tearing his eyes to look at her face for a moment only to see that she is looking away from him. Her expression is veiled and pensive, despite the words she has just said. He shakes his head in response, wishing he could give her more of an answer. “Nein. All I remember is falling unconscious and then Caduceus picking me up and telling me not to look down.”

A beat of silence, and then -

“Do you, Jester? Remember?”

She laughs, shakily. “Oh, I dunno. A...bit, I guess. It was very scary, y’know...but I’m alive and that’s good and...”

He hears her let out a sigh, and watches as her lower lip trembles, and in a series of small, but infinitesimally long moments they feel as though they stretch on forever he watches as whatever facade she had propped herself up on crumbles.

“Oh,” the sound escapes his lips, and before he can really figure out what he is doing, or have time to think about why, he moves to crouch down by her side, one hand resting on her arm.

“Jester…hey”

“I’m sorry, Caleb.”

“It’s okay.” He watches her shake her head, and shift on the bed, lifting her fallen gaze to latch onto his.

“You know you know you said that one time when you asked back in Zadash if everything was fine? Well…” she tries to speak through choked tears, her voice wobbling, “I maybe lied to you guys. And now I’ve died and my Momma didn't even _know_ and you didn’t tell her and…” Her words diminish into strangled, watery sobs, as he lingers by her side. For a moment, paralysis grip his tongue and he forgets how to speak. The grief of loss is too real, and for a moment it is not Jester, but his parents screaming and crying through flames, reflected back at him and there is ash and dust and--

But then, in an instant, he is back and it is Jester in front of him. And she is crying. And she needs _someone._

He tries to hush soothingly at her, his voice low and soft and as close to comforting as he can make it. “But you’re _back_ Jester. Your Traveler watched out for you. And... we’re here. You’ve always got us.” His thumb runs up her arm in a comforting gesture, the feeling of her skin weirdly cool against the pad of his fingertip. But he pushes any notion he might have otherwise had to the back of his mind, only focusing on helping her. Cramp winds its way up his leg, but he grits his teeth and bears it.

“As for your Mother, you know she loves you very much. If you want to talk to her, she’s only a message away.”

Not, perhaps, the most sound advice he could give. But then, he is not thinking clearly. She is too close, too emotional, too real, so much so he almost feels trapped by her. There is so much he wants to do and say, but finds he lacks the effort to bring the million thoughts racing around his mind to fruition in the hopes that Jester might take comfort from it.

Instead, with a snap of his fingers, he summons Frumpkin.

“Hey, here you go buddy,” he says, letting the tortoiseshell familiar clamber and nestle into Jester’s lap, as he finally picks himself up off the floor, letting the feeling tingle back into his legs.

“You can keep him for as long as you like. He’s yours now.”

She sniffs and shakes her head. “Oh Caleb, but he’s your cat.”

He smiles sadly at her, his eyes heavy with emotion. “Ja, but he’s yours now. You take good care of him, hm? I’ll take him when you want to give him back.”

She gives him a kind, watery smile and he watches as she unfolds Sprinkle from the fold in the bedding to nuzzle him, and curls one hand around Frumpkin, who purrs loudly at Jester’s touch.

Taking that as his cue to leave he turns to walk slowly towards the door handle, before he casting one look back behind him. “Get some sleep. I’m pretty sure Beau’s getting pastries for you, right now, so you probably don’t have long.”

“Thank you, Caleb.”

He nods once, opening the door with a click, letting his eyes linger on her form for just a few minutes longer. “Ja, well - you know. Anytime. Always.”

  
  



End file.
